Attorneys for 30 of the 48 Venezuelan asylum applicants who were transported by plane from Texas to the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard are seeking to launch a criminal inquiry on the grounds that the victims were “influenced to board aircraft and traverse state boundaries under false pretenses.”
Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based organization that is representing the asylum seekers pro bono, claims that the group, which includes women and young children, was taken advantage of in a planned political prank that targeted vulnerable individuals based on their race and country of origin.
The lawyers claim that “individuals, working in tandem with state officials, including the governor of Florida,” made a number of false promises to the migrants in order to persuade them to travel, including promises of employment opportunities, educational opportunities for their children, and immigration assistance.
Now, the attorneys are pleading with US attorney Rachael Rollins and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to launch formal criminal investigations against individuals responsible for the group’s transportation.
LCR said in a letter that “we firmly feel that criminal laws were committed by the perpetrators of this scam.”
This political prank has endangered our customers, which is cowardly. Many people who need medical attention had to be taken to the hospital as soon as they arrived. Some now face immigration hearings as early as Monday hundreds of miles away,’ the attorneys stated in a statement.
The statement continued, “They preyed on the vulnerabilities of our clients—many of whom had experienced severe trauma in their native countries and throughout their travels to the United States—and used this weakness to acquire trust via false promises.
The refugees were only informed that Martha’s Vineyard was their final destination and not Boston after they had already started traveling.
According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the immigrants had signed waivers previously and so knew exactly where they were heading.
Since then, the refugees have been relocated to Joint Base Cape Cod on land.
Leaders of the local community have charged the governor with trying to gain political advantage.
One of the latest actions taken by Republican governors of southern border states, many of whom have bussed thousands of migrants to Washington, DC, New York, and Chicago, was the dispatching of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, has dispatched 11,000 migrants to sanctuary states and localities, including 2,500 to New York City and 8,000 to Washington, DC.
Since late August, at least 600 migrants from Texas have also been brought to Chicago.
Doug Ducey, the governor of Arizona, has also bused close to 2,000 migrants to Washington, D.C.
The Biden Administration’s inability to effectively address the immigration situation is a major goal of the campaign, particularly in the run-up to the November midterm elections when immigration is expected to be a major concern for voters.
On Saturday, a bus carrying around 50 migrants from Texas dropped them out in front of Kamala Harris’s house.
Democrats claim that the tactic just adds to the anxiety of the migrants, who often want to reconnect with family members who have already arrived in the nation as they wait for their own immigration hearings.
The Republican governors’ actions have been criticized by the White House, which claimed that the migrants—most of whom were from Venezuela—were being utilized as a political gimmick.
“These were kids.” Moms, they were. In their flight from communism. What actions did Governors DeSantis and Abbott take against them? At a news conference on Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that they “used them as political pawns, treated them like cattle.”
She declared: “We shouldn’t be exploiting individuals, refugees, who are escaping communism as a political pawn. This problem is terrible and repulsive.”